


Die Another Day

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s08e16 Remember the Titans, Episode: s09e04 Slumber Party, Family Issues, Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:45:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4334348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's on the phone asking about summoning something from Greek mythology. The Wicked Witch of the West is invading the computer lab. The agent who can kill with a touch hasn't quite recovered from her near-death experience. The devil's daughter occasionally feels like she's herding cats.</p><p>It's just as well that SHIELD doesn't get official reports on Ninja operations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"What do you know about Prometheus?"

 Dawn pulled the phone away from her ear, stared at it in disbelief, shook her head, then brought it back up to her head. "Don’t you have a whole new library for this? Since when am I your supernatural encyclopedia?"

 "Since we realized we might have to summon Zeus," Sam answered succinctly.

 She shrugged, even though he couldn't see the action. "Fair enough. So, what about Prometheus?"

 "We investigated a possible zombie, found an amnesiac who died every day for as long as he could remember. Um, we're not sure if Artemis has a crush on him or wants to kill him. And then this woman showed up with a kid, who apparently has the same curse as his father."

 "Prometheus' kid?" Dawn asked tightly. She tried to stay out of the affairs of the immortals for the most part. She drew the line at endangering children, however. No matter how things had been done "back in the day," threatening or hurting kids was  _not_  okay.

 She'd been one of those kids once upon a time.

 "Yeah. Name's Oliver. He's seven."

 It took a moment for Dawn to unclench her jaw enough to speak. "Bunker?"

 "Yeah, we're on our way there now."

 "See you in a few hours."

 ***

 By the time Dawn arrived, the bunker was in full swing. "You guys are just having a party here, aren't you?"

 Bobby, having come a few weeks earlier to check out the newly discovered bunker, or as Dean nicknamed it, "the Batcave," had yet to return to South Dakota. He was probably torn between all the research and his salvage yard. In the meantime though, he had taken Henry under his wing in educating the temporally displaced man about everything of importance he missed in his fifty-five year transit.

 Charlie had already relocated herself to the well-warded information jackpot that was the former Men of Letters headquarters. Ash was opting not to move to Kansas, preferring to remain under Ellen's charge, even if he spent half the day messaging and/or video conferencing with his fellow computer expert.

 Then there was Sam and Dean and the trio that was presumably Prometheus, his son, and the boy's mother.

 Dawn made nine, as Charlie noted with the requisite Lord of the Rings references.

 "I am not a hobbit," Dean protested immediately.

 “Can we even count her as just one person?” Sam asked, a little crease between his eyes suggesting the question wasn’t _only_ to derail the conversation before it could devolve into an argument over which person was which Tolkien character.

 Predictably, Charlie jumped on the question. “That’s a good question! I never really thought of it that way, but she’s, like, four people? More if count the pre- and post-NINJAT-cover-up versions. _And_ the pre-SHIELD iterations. But less if you consider Kyria Lux as the Clark Kent to Orion’s Superman. And that makes Dawn Morrow the counterpart to Morningstar, although only the ninjas know about that.”

 “So we’re countin’ one woman as two people?” Bobby asked, somehow managing to imply they were all idjits without anything saying the word.

 “I wouldn’t say she’s two discrete entities,” Charlie countered earnestly. “More like, I don’t know, a spectrum? Like light! You know, when you refract white light and you get a whole rainbow of colors? Oooh. Maybe that’s what they mean by Light-Bringer!”

 “What color are you this week?” Dean asked, trying for serious but sounding like he was about to burst out laughing.

 It was times like this that Dawn thought Joshua was right and her grandfather really did like her in some odd, strange way. Because most the people she cared about were hunters and spies and therefore had little difficulty adapting to different names.

 Except Phil, but he was having a hard time with the shady measures Fury employed in his convalescence.

 Granted, part of the thing with Phil had also been his whole team of people who _didn’t know her_ and she was _trying_ to have Dawn _be_ different from Kyria. Witchcraft could only do so much. If intelligent, observant spies met two different women who acted exactly the same, red flags would be raised. _Especially_ when an unidentified interloper was trying to discover secrets.

 It didn’t help that Phil’s call had come after a particularly busy week and she hadn’t reacted well with to Pestilence attacking Lily.

 When things settled down a little, she’d try to explain that to Phil. Probably when one of his agents wasn’t nearly dying and being saved by guesswork alien science he’d take it better. And if his reaction hurt a little, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, and it wasn’t as though Kyria Lux was gone for good.

 She hadn’t lost Phil’s friendship. Even if she _had_ – she couldn’t risk exposing the secret world she was born into.

 Still.

 “Violet, maybe?”

 “Isn’t that the name of the girl from _A Series of Unfortunate Events_? Kind of poetic, actually. Unless it’s a code. It is a code? Did you get new codes and not tell me?”

 Dawn stared. Blinked. “Are we playing a word association game that I should know about? Maybe a book-association game? Unless – stars, you didn’t let Charlie have _coffee_ , did you?”

 Sam suddenly developed a need to study the grain of the low table as Bobby’s eyebrows rose. “She’s not supposed to have coffee? That’d explain a lot.”

 "What are you people talking about?" the mother of the cursed boy demanded. "And what does it have to do with my son?"

 Dawn raised an eyebrow at the brothers. "You didn't explain. Again," she felt compelled to add.  

 "We were waiting for you to show up so we'd only have to go over it once," Dean said.

 "I'm here now."

 "I see that."

 "Let's take this to the library, shall we?" Sam interjected.

 ***

 "Okay, so Ollie's dad is a Greek God who has been cursed to die every day by Zeus," the mother, Hayley, summarized. "And you guys are . . . Ghostbusters. Am I getting this right?"

 The hunters took offense to being called Ghostbusters. "Well, you know," Dean said, "due to the fact that your son is currently, albeit temporarily, dead, I'm gonna let that one slide."

 "They're far more professional than Ghostbusters," Dawn pointed out. "But you're welcome to google 'Ghost-facers' if you're interested."

 Hayley gave Dawn a look that suggested she had grown a second head since she'd last looked in a mirror. Extra limbs Dawn could do – or were the wings technically Kyria’s? She had failed to include that trait with either persona and, thankfully, only JARVIS had photographic evidence that she’d ever had feathers – but aside from alternate identities, she didn’t think she could grow another head.

 "You have to realize this sounds crazy."

 "It's true," Prometheus, currently going by Shane as if there weren’t enough alter-egos thick on the ground lately, said. "I didn't believe it myself at first, but it's the only thing that makes sense."

 "Metaphysically, you're not human." Hayley twitched as she looked at her, but Dawn merely shrugged. "It's the sort of thing I notice."

 "Like the Amazons?" Dean said, perking up.

 "Yes," Dawn said with a sigh. She paused a moment in thought. "Have you told your grandfather about Emma yet?"

 The brothers exchanged guilty looks. Guess that answered that then.

 "Emma?" Henry repeated.

 "Grandfather?" Hayley asked. "You're nowhere near old enough to be their grandfather. Unless you're not human either?" There was a fatalistic lilt to her voice at odds with the cringe of her shoulders. Poor woman had to be rather further out of her depth than all the not-staying-dead provided for.

 Henry shifted uncomfortably. "I ran through a portal in 1958 and came out last month."

 "Out of our closet," Dean added snarkily. "That's something the motel didn't advertise. But that's beside the point. Look, the faster you wrap your brain around this, the faster we can solve the problem."

 "Solve the problem?" Hayley repeated, voice higher than normal. "I – I'm not even sure I understand the problem."

 "Blame the pagans," Dawn suggested tongue-in-cheek to cut through the regathering tension. "It's what the Catholic Church did."

 "Just because your daddy's in the Bible don't mean we're the church," Bobby grumbled.

 "Pagans do tend to be a nuisance," Dean admitted.

 "Hey, it was  _my_  fingernail the Christmas pagans pulled out," Sam argued.

 "Yeah, and they tried to get  _my_  tooth," Dean countered.

 "Boys!" Bobby barked. "You're both pretty. Can we get on with this already?"

 "What exactly are we getting on with?" Hayley asked again.

 "Our best option is to summon Zeus and convince him to undo the curse," Sam said.

 "Summons Zeus," Hayley repeated in disbelief.

 "Yes."

 "And if he doesn't want to undo it?"

 "I persuade him," Dawn said with a dark smile. "Alternatively I can kill him. Curses like this tend to die with their caster. One way or another, we're breaking this curse."

 "This can't be happening," Hayley said, shaking her head. "This – who are you, anyway?"

 "I'm not entirely sure you'll be able to handle it," she admitted.

 "This is my son we're trying to uncurse! I want to know who I'm relying on to help!"

 "Dawn Morrow, Agent of SHIELD. I also go by Morningstar, after my father.” And then, because Dawn thought the woman could use a just a touch of something less mystical or mythical, she added, “But you’d probably know me as Orion, from New York.”

 Hayley stared.

 Charlie jumped up. "I know where the booze is, if you're interested. If not, I make a mean cup of tea."

 Hayley followed her out of the library in a daze.

 ***

In order to summon Zeus, Dean left to get fulgurite from a New Age crystal shop while Sam took Shane to dig up the grave of a Greek pagan.

 Henry cornered Dawn as soon as his grandsons were out of the bunker. "I have an Amazon for a great-granddaughter? What else have those boys left out?"

 "Shouldn't you be having this conversation with them?"

 "I tried. They claimed 'urgent business' and ran away like the big brave hunters they are."

 Dawn tried to cover a snort and ended up almost choking. "Hunters have problems dealing with emotional issues. More so, when the hunter in question is a Winchester."

 "And?" Henry pressed.

 She shrugged helplessly. "I'm not the secretary for their personal lives, Henry. I do know Sam's dating a kitsune," she offered. “But that’s only because he couldn’t ask his brother for help with the case.”

 The man out of time blinked. "Don't they - "

 "Eat brains? Yes, but Amy's a mortician. And if Jacob has a problem, SHIELD knows where to find fresh bodies."

 "Jacob?"

 "Amy's son. No, not Sam's," Dawn added quickly as Henry's eyes got wide. "Once we get this sorted, I might recommend Hayley take her son to meet them. It might do Ollie some good to meet another boy who doesn't meet anyone's definition of normal. Jacob's a good kid, not counting his awe of superheroes."

 "You? Bobby showed me the videos from New York."

 Dawn groaned. "Technically that’s my other persona – Kyria’s supposedly doing diplomatic things on Asgard – but yeah. Thank the stars Pepper was able to nix any and all plans for an Orion Barbie Doll. What's out there is bad enough."

 Henry chuckled. "Society seems more commercially driven then I remember, but Captain America was always a big deal. I bought John some of the comics."

 "Steve is  _still_  a big deal, even though he's mostly incognito. I wonder if those comics are in one of his old storage lockers. John had a lot of those, and I don't think we found them all yet." Dawn glanced around the room to make sure it was empty before motioning Henry closer. "Under his hard-ass exterior," she stage-whispered, "Bobby's got a collection of Captain America comics stashed somewhere."

 "Bobby?" Henry repeated in disbelief. "I wouldn't have pegged him as the type."

 Dawn gave a conspiratorial nod.

 "Huh. Do you think Oliver would open up to a superhero?"

 Dawn shot him a long-suffering look. "First off, right now I’m Morningstar, not Orion. Secondly, I'm fermenting hero-worship now? That's what we've come to?"

 Henry shrugged. "However you want to cut it, you’re both. Young boys are impressionable. You're famous. Go impress him."

 "And put Hayley more at ease? Fine. Let me know when your boys get back."

 

***


	2. Chapter 2

It was the scream that sent Dawn running for the door.

 In the entrance hallway of the Men of Letters bunker she found the Winchester brothers standing over the body of Shane.

 "Again?" she exclaimed in frustration. They needed Prometheus alive for when they summoned Zeus.

 "What do you mean  _again?"_  the source of the scream protested in shocked horror. "I haven't had an accident in years! I swear I didn't mean to kill him!"

 "It's not your fault, Lily," Dawn said, laying a hand on the original ninja's shoulder before the woman suffered a relapse.  _Damn_  Zeus and his curse.  _Lily_  was not supposed to be the one traumatized. "He's cursed to die every day. Pretty much Murphy's best friend. Impossibly fatal accidents are suddenly a regular occurrence."

 "So I didn't kill him?" Lily asked shakily.

 "Oh you killed him," Dean replied bluntly. "He's just not gonna stay dead."

 "Ignore my brother," Sam told his fellow "special child" of Azazel's. "Dean's come down with a terminal case of foot-in-mouth and should be ignored whenever possible."

 "Go eat a salad!"

 "Case in point," Sam continued with a tight smile.

 Feeling a slight tremble, Dawn slid her hand over to pull Lily into a one-armed hug. Issues with physical contact aside, even at her worst, Lily could not use her power to harm Dawn. As a result Lily tended to cling to the nephilim when distressed. She was definitely distressed.

 "You've got Shane?" Dawn asked the brothers.

 "I'm not supposed to haul bodies around my own home," Dean grumbled.

 "We've got this," Sam said with a bitch-face at his brother.

 Leaving the brothers to bring Shane to whatever room they were laying the temporary corpses in, Dawn led Lily to the kitchen where she plied the licensed doctor with a fresh pot of Irish coffee while explaining the situation Lily had walked into.

 "Not that I'm not glad to see you, Prometheus's unfortunate accident aside, but what are you doing here?"

 "Terry decided she couldn't put up with the classified shtick. I  _told_  her in the beginning, but she liked the thrill of dating a secret agent. I guess she changed her mind," Lily finished gloomily, staring into the depths of her coffee cup before draining the cup and holding it out for a refill.

 "Just because the demon blood dilutes the effects of alcohol, doesn't mean you should abuse it." Lily looked so miserable – a death-touch accident on top of everything else? – that Dawn felt compelled to add, "Exceptions can be made for bad break-ups.” She refilled the cup.

 “Thanks,” Lily said half-heartedly.

 Dawn waited a minute, but she couldn’t let it go. “It was the plague wasn’t it? You couldn’t tell her how you contracted pneumonic plague or how you survived when the doctors were baffled and that’s what drove the wedge.”

 The tightened line between her ninja’s shoulders told Dawn she was right. Grandfather damn it. She was supposed to _protect_ her people, not lead them into getting their heads scrambled up and fucked with. There were ripples, consequences to everything and she _knew_ that, had always known that, and she still couldn’t protect her people.

 "Charlie invited you?" she guessed, changing the subject before it could drag either of them down further. It wasn’t a particularly hard guess. The hacker had struck up an unlikely friendship with Stage Show's Dante. Possibly because they both played for the other team. SHIELD didn't really have fraternization regs, and the agency had gotten rid of their "don't ask, don't tell" policy long before the Army did. That said, the two had never been "together." At least, Dawn didn’t think so. Either way, they had bonded over their mutual appreciation of the female form.

 Lily nodded once. “She said I could help her with some antique computer she found in here.”

 “By which she meant keep her company so she could geek out to someone who might actually pay attention?” Dawn translated with an overly broad grin. Lily gave a hesitant nod. “Yeah, Charlie’s having a field day with that thing. Apparently, it runs without being plugged into anything. Come on. With everything going on, I’m pretty sure Darcy was the only supervision she’s had.”

 “Isn’t she in London?” Lily asked in confusion.

 Dawn grinned. “The advantage of having SHIELD footing the phone bills. Fury can’t even complain because she’s expanded into wrangling ninjas as well as scientists. I can see why her wrangling skills impressed Pepper. But Jane keeps a crazy schedule even without accounting for the time difference, so Darcy couldn’t stay on the phone long."

 They found Charlie digging in the back of the ancient computer.

 “You’re here!” the red-headed computer geek exclaimed, quickly pulling herself away from the computer. In her haste, she overbalanced, knocking into the shelf behind her.

 Dawn noted with a detached sort of observation as a bottle fell from the shelf and the gray liquid inside sloshed around.

 The detachment swiftly vanished when the contents continued moving of their own volition after the bottle settled on the floor.

 “Get back!” she exclaimed, grabbing Charlie’s arm and all but shoving the two startled women out into the hall. They watched, Dawn blocking the doorway, as the liquid forced the stopper out and started climbing the wall, transforming into thick gray webbing as it went. Eventually it resolved into two pods attached to the wall.

 “This is why you shouldn’t keep liquids near computers,” Charlie said seriously.

 “You’ve spent too much time with Dean if you’re picking up his bad habits,” Dawn remarked with exasperation, keeping one eye on the gray goo.

 “Of all the things he does, snarking in the face of danger is hardly the worst,” Lily pointed out reasonably.

 “Very true,” Charlie agreed. “And he’s not the only one who does it either. But seriously. Creepy growing formerly bottled goo does _not_ belong in the computer lab.”

 A piercing green light slashed out of one of the pods to let a haggard old woman escape.

 Seeing the trio standing in the doorway, the escapee hissed, eyes flashing green.

 "Who are you and what are you doing here?" Dawn demanded, extending her senses to get a read on the ragged woman.

 The woman hissed, eyes flashing green again as she threw a green lightning bolt at the trio.

 Dawn caught it on her sword and, shaking off the tingling feeling the jumped up her arm, threw herself at the fairy witch, impaling her quickly upon the sword. With a horrible scream, the witch dissolved into smoke, leaving behind only the ratty clothes she had worn.

 "That's one way to dispose of a body," she noted grimly before turning to her companions. "You okay?"

 "I think so," Charlie replied, while Lily grimaced, "I'm just having a really great day."

 Dawn shrugged. "Those happen."

 "What's in the other one?" Charlie asked.

 "That's what I'm about to find out." With the point of her sword, Dawn gingerly cut part of the way through the unopened side of the web. An arm fell out. "It's human," she declared carefully, cutting open the rest of the pod and catching the unconscious young woman who tumbled out.

 "Do I even want to know who that is?" Lily asked in resignation.

 ***

 Charlie was ecstatic upon identifying the two people formerly contained within the bottle. "Holy crap! The first case investigated in this bunker involved Dorothy. She and the witch came into this room, and they never came out. This will never stop blowing my mind!"

 "Okay, pace yourself, Toto," Dean told her.

 "This is my childhood come to life!" Charlie continued, sparing a glare for the fun-sucking hunter. "I loved the  _Wizard of Oz_  books!"

 "Those books are the ravings of a sad, old man," Dorothy said darkly from where she sat with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, "my father."

 "Wait. Your father was L. Frank Baum, the writer?" Charlie bit down on an excited squeal, but couldn’t help feeling like Christmas had come early.

 "A Man of Letters," Dorothy said in agreement. "Another glorified librarian, you ask me. But that is irrelevant. We have to find her."

 "No," Sam said gently, but insistently, "we have to talk before anyone does anything, okay? Dorothy?"

 "Talk?" the not-so-fictional character repeated in disdain. "Typical Men of Letters, standing around, having a nice little chat with your noses buried in your books while your little secretaries take notes." She gave the group a considering look down her nose. "Although why you need three secretaries is beyond even my wildest imagination."

 "Secretary?" Lily repeated. "I am  _not_  a secretary. Although I'm beginning to understand why Bela sees red every time someone calls her that."

 "To be fair," Charlie interjected, "Bela sort of  _is_  a secretary."

 "Just don't let her hear you say that," Dawn reminded her.

 "Not secretaries?" Dorothy said in confusion. "You're Women of Letters? All of you? Wh – how long have I been out?"

 "We are  _not_  Women of Letters," Dean protested in indignation. "We're hunters."

 "Henry's a Man of Letters," Dawn said. "If he has his way, you will be too. Bobby's already halfway there. A lot of the ninjas and affiliates are, actually."

 "According to the files, you've been gone for over seventy five years," Sam explained.

 "Closer to eighty," Dawn corrected. "That's longer than Henry's fifty five  _or_  Steve's seventy. I'm thinking about starting a time travel club."

 "There are others who used that binding spell?" Dorothy asked.

 "Not exactly," Dawn said with a shrug. "Steve spent the time frozen on ice and Henry used a portal with a bit of a farther reach than intended."

 For a moment Dorothy looked interested, but then she shook her head. "We couldn't find a way to kill the witch, so I did the only thing I could. If I am awake, then so is she."

 "About that . . ." Charlie began.

 "Elphaba already came and went," Dawn said shortly. Charlie considered asking Darcy to send her the _Wicked_ soundtrack, before realizing it would probably be inappropriate.

 "Who?"

 Dawn shook her head. "The Wicked Witch popped out of the cocoon before we cut you free."

 "We have to find her!"

 "We did," Dawn said firmly. "I killed her."

 "How? I tried cutting off her head, burning her, dousing her with holy water. All she did was laugh."

 Dawn summoned her sword. "I used my wood chipper."

 That was a really simplistic description and Tony – _Stark_ , which Charlie still thought was pretty amazing – hadn’t figured out how she did it yet, but, really, Dawn was more a question of science than of engineering and Tony got annoyed whenever “magic” was used as any sort of explanation.

 Still, Dean snickered.

 "Wood chipper?" Dorothy repeated in confusion.

 "Yeah – beats everything," she explained. "In this case, also known as an Archangel Sword. I've been using it a lot lately. Dark Elf, Hell Knight, and now, Wicked Witch. I'm half convinced this is because Steve knew the damn flying monkey reference," she added in a frustrated mutter.

 "The witch is dead?"

 "Ding-dong," Dean replied with a grin. Sam's bitch-face at his brother was marred by the fact that most of the room was covering aborted laughter.

 "She's dead. Didn't leave a body, but her greasy rags are right there," Dawn pointed at the pile that had been kicked to the edge of the room. "Archangel Swords kill just about anything. If things turn out on point with how things have been going recently, I'm probably going to have to use it on Zeus too."

 "Zeus? The Greek God? What are you doing hunting a Greek God? And how – how do you have the sword of an Archangel?"

 "We're trying to uncurse Prometheus and his seven year old son," Dawn said succinctly. "And the sword belonged to my father."

 "Okay, how did your  _father_  have the sword of an archangel? I'm assuming he wasn't a Man of Letters."

 Dawn laughed amidst the various expressions of disbelief and ironic amusement. Charlie might not have been a field agent, but she’d heard plenty of stories about how Dawn (Kyria) made everything more complicated than it otherwise should have been. It was oddly comforting that in the face of all sorts of assorted strangeness, her boss could be strangely consistent.

 "No, definitely not. I came by my sword more directly, I'm afraid. Dawn Morrow, called Morningstar, destroying religious beliefs, one person at a time."

 "Huh. And I thought _my_ father was bad."

 There was a pause and then Dean broke in with, "That's it?"

 "Oh no! Satan's daughter! Somebody run and get me holy water!" Dorothy gasped in mock horror. Charlie grinned at Lily, whose face twitched into something that was almost a smile. Progress!

 Dorothy raised an eyebrow. "That more what you were expecting? Please. The war was a lot bloodier than my father's books made it out to be. It takes a lot to shock me. In addition, Dawn is clearly within the Men of Letters' warding. Unless you invited her in and she enthralled you afterwards, she isn't anything the wards should keep out."

 Dawn sighed. "Why can't I get that level-headed reaction more often?"

 "People in general are stupid," Dorothy replied.

 “People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals,” Charlie quoted to see Lily look a little less depressed.

 Dawn watched the interchange and gave a tight smile. “Unfortunately," she agreed. Sam and Dean nodded their agreement.

 On cue, the lights flickered. Dawn glanced up, but unless she got a _lot_ subtler in her tells, the electricity stabilized without any assistance from her. "Shane's already down, so that was probably Oliver," she guessed with a grimace.

 Charlie winced in sympathy. Death by electric short circuit was not something she would wish on an innocent boy. Clearly, pagans were dicks. The _Supernatural_ books agreed. And according to Dawn and Clint and Becky, even Gabriel was something of a dick, even though he wasn’t a pagan now and had _technically_ never been a pagan.

 Before Dorothy could ask, Lily volunteered to explain. "I'm better off staying away from those two anyway."

 Charlie stayed too, mostly because _Dorothy_ , but also for moral support for Lily and because there really wasn’t anything she could do for the Greek-pagan-curse-thing.

 ***


	3. Chapter 3

They found a nice abandoned warehouse to summon Zeus, because it was never a good idea to invite possible enemies past your wards or into your home.

 "You think your, um, uncle would be any help?" Sam asked, putting the final touches on the Devil's Trap hold-all.

 "That would require him answering his phone," Dawn said tightly. "For all that he showed up pretty promptly when I left the planet, he still can't pick up a ringing phone."

 "How goes the horned god's rehab?" Dean put in.

 "Well, actually. They stopped in on me when I – well, Kyria – was in Asgard in November.” It was occasionally incredibly frustrating that her ninjas were better at adapting to her change of identity than she was – and she was the one _used_ to changing identities! It wasn’t a clear break this time, though. There were too many people, ninjas and associates all, who knew Kyria was Orion was Morningstar was Dawn. It blurred the lines she was trying so hard to keep distinct.

 It probably also didn’t help that she was still distantly Kyria at the same time she was Dawn.

 She had never _been_ just one person since she found out who her father was. It had just never been this obvious before.

 “Just so I got this straight, you’re _two_ agents of SHIELD?” Bobby asked in his “you’re all idjits” voice. “And Morrow does just about everything Lux did before you disappeared her?”

 "Yep," Dawn said, popping the ‘p’. “Although Morrow’s supposedly laying low for now.”

 “There wasn’t anything on the ninja boards,” Sam began worriedly.

 She shook her head. “Not a ninja thing. I mean, we haven’t gotten the third Horseman yet, but the laying low is more because of a, uh –  _complication_  – with Phil's recovery."

 "You mean the whole stabbed through the heart by Thor's crazy brother thing? What could possibly go wrong with recovering from  _that?_ " Dean asked with innocently wide eyes.

 "Well, it wasn't the stabbed through the heart thing so much as the ball of lightning patching up his heart thing," she retorted. "And neither one was the direct cause of one of Phil's current team taking two bullets point blank to the chest."

 "Oh my God!" Hayley yelped, pulling her son closer to her.

 "Some idjit wanted to know why Phil wasn't dead?" Bobby hazarded shrewdly.

 "Yeah," she grimly agreed. "Fury classified the whole thing higher than the atomic launch codes, so some asshole who claims to be psychic – I’ll believe _that_ when I see it, seeing how his so-called visions missed the whole ninja memo – decided to . . . _motivate_ Phil to find out. Officially, Phil called Orion, she called Fury, he called Morrow, and Morrow hurried out to help."

 "Unofficially, you ordered your boss around?" Dean suggested with a grin. He'd met Fury once, and the Director had scared the crap out of him. Sam had fared a little better. Not much, though.

 "Pretty much. Even though we both knew it was a trap. I had the facility blown after we left, but that will probably only buy time. Phil wasn't happy about it – apparently Agent Morrow comes across as a bit of a cold-hearted bitch."

 "The agent okay?" Bobby asked.

 "Oh, yeah, Skye's made a full recovery," Dawn said cheerfully, before dropping her smile. "The problem arises in that the homicidal fake-psychic decided Morrow was the weak link to press for answers. It's a teeny bit difficult to track Horsemen when there are mercenary kidnappers out for me – well, Dawn."

 "The Horsemen?" Bobby repeated, finally catching on. Maybe, living in the same building for however long they stayed, Charlie could finally get him on the computer, because the ninja boards were a fairly big thing and Bobby was too much of an information operator to neglect a source like that. "Like of the Apocalypse? Like that sorry excuse for a hunt Roy and Walt clocked back in December? Balls."

 “Yeah, well, after a year and half of radio silence, Akasha finally decided to be a bigger pain in my ass,” Dawn grumbled.

 "Why can't you just call her Lilith?" Dean demanded irately.

 “Charlie would probably call it a Voldemort thing,” Sam said helpfully. Not so helpfully.

 Dawn groaned. “It’s really not. If anything it’s a government-agencies-swim-in-codenames thing. Besides, she _is_ queen of the damned.” Granted, one day she was going to hunt down the person in charge of thinking up codenames for her department and ask what the fuck went through their head. Goldeneye for a yellow-eyed demon and queen of the damned for the queen bitch of Hell. And don’t get her _started_ on NINJAT. No, I’m not joking about this. Someone somewhere had a demented sense of humor and was taking it out on her.

 Not that most of the usernames Ash and Charlie came up with (much as they tried to deny they assigned the usernames) were any less groan-worthy, but ninja board usernames were not the same as (un)official codenames.

 “You didn't have a problem when it was Alec," she reminded Dean.

 "Bond. James Bond. He's awesome. He's like Batman."

 “How goes the Horsemen hunt?” Sam asked, successfully realigning the conversation.

 “If you ignore the fact that Lily ended up in the hospital with the _plague_ , not completely terribly,” Dawn admitted grudgingly. “Lucifer’s not any closer to rising, so they’re not as bad as they could be.” She shrugged. “Two down, one to go, no massive body count to speak of. But they’re enough of an issue without having to worry about persistent mercenary types seeing something they shouldn’t.”

 "Two down?" Sam repeated with a furrowed brow. "That would be Famine and Pestilence, right? Which means War’s still out there because Death’s not a problem?”

 "He isn’t," Dawn agreed with more conviction that Sam managed. "Death's inevitable and doesn't go around trying to create more work for himself. He's – well, he's sort of the father of the reapers – part of the natural order. The other three – not so much. And oddly enough, War can be the subtlest of the three."

 "Not to be freaking out over here, but can we just summon Zeus already?" Hayley exclaimed in a shaky voice. "I'm having a hard enough time dealing with gods and titans and angels. And the Wicked Witch. And – and alien superheroes? I draw the line at the Apocalypse."

 "We've lived with its possibility for the last six years," Dean retorted. 

 "But you're right," Sam cut in before his brother could say anything else to overly freak out the poor woman. "We should get on with the summoning. Dean?"

 With a grumble, Dean began the ritual.

 ***

 As far as summonings went, it was fairly straightforward, and Ancient Greek was far from the worst language they'd had to recite. Dean placed a copper bowl on the floor at the edge of the devil's trap and threw in a lit match. Flames shot up from the bowl and then quickly died back down.

 "Stay calm," Dean said, speaking mostly to Hayley.

 It was like something out of a movie with overdone theatrics. Amid the flickering lights and the rolling thunder, lightning struck the bowl, then a second, larger lightning bolt flashed in and transformed into a man. He was a little on the older side, with gray-streaked hair and beard, dressed up in a suit. Electricity flashed up his arm. Dean glanced over to see Dawn rolling her eyes at the over-the-top effects.

 "Oh, come now," Zeus proclaimed. "Can't we do this civilized?"

 "Well, it depends on you," Dean said, taking point. Dawn was their ace in the hole. "All we need is to break a curse you put on a little kid." The god looked over at the kid in question, who shrank into his mother. "So, how about you say, 'yes,' and we all go home?"

 Zeus ignored Dean in favor of Shane. Figured. "Nice to see you again, Prometheus. All cleaned up. I've been looking for you."

 For a guy who thought he was a human – albeit, an odd one – up until a couple of days ago, Shane didn't seem particularly quailed by the overblown dramatics. "It's gone too far, Zeus. Break the curse."

 "It's your child who has the affliction," Zeus said, far too interested in the matter. "Interesting." 

 "So, what's it gonna be?" Dean asked. "The easy way or we could do this the hard way."

 Zeus gave a gentlemanly smile. "Break the trap, dear man, and I'll break the curse."

 "No dice," he replied. "We want payment upfront. Fix the kid."

 "Going once . . ." Zeus began.

 "Don't be that guy."

 "Going twice . . ."

 "Hey, you can rot here for all I care," Dean said with casual indifference.

 "Yes," Zeus replied easily, "and the child will continue to suffer."

 "Curses usually die with their caster," Dawn observed. "So, theoretically, all we have to do is kill you and we're golden."

 "You think you can kill a god?"

 "Why not? We iced a Knight of Hell not so long ago," she replied smugly.

 Abruptly, the trio of hunters were tossed back into a cement wall. Dean hadn’t gotten thrown into a wall in a while; he wasn’t missing much.

  _Sonuvabitch. Ow._

 And _that_ would be Dawn’s SNAFU effect on hunts. Gotta love the reliability. And the timing.

 "Balls," Bobby ground out.

 "I trust you've met my daughter," Zeus said with a malicious smile as the leather-clad woman, Artemis, stepped into the room with her hand up, palm out to hold the hunters in place. Dean really hated the getting thrown around part of the job description. He was _not a freaking damsel, dammit!_

 "This is the son of Prometheus," Zeus explained to his daughter, who looked over at the amnesiac titan. "And he's cursed to suffer death every day. I must admit, I could never have conceived such a horrible fate for such a beautiful child. Just goes to show, we must all leave room for happy accidents."

 Hayley took an involuntary step back, evidently not having expected the god to be a sociopathic asshole. Eh. She’d learn eventually. "What does that mean? I don't understand."

 "Tell me," Zeus ordered, "has Prometheus experienced the child's death yet?" She gave a shaky nod. "How did he take it? Did he hurt?" She hesitantly nodded again. "Good," he proclaimed. "Imagine a thousand children all dying in unison. Only then would you understand my pain. But we can't always have what we want."

 "I suppose you want out of that trap, don't you?" Dawn asked innocently. Too innocently, really. Her act was as almost as overblown as Zeus’.

 Zeus turned to glare at her. Artemis frowned when her hand-wave had no effect on the woman. 

 She grinned unrepentantly at them both. "See, I've been around this block a few times. Normally, I try to stay out of pagan affairs, because I'm a bit of a liberal. As long as you don't hurt anyone who didn't have it coming – I really couldn't care less what you do most times. I can accept you have a genuine grievance against Prometheus, and I'd probably be willing to let that slide. But taking it out on a kid and a guy who can't remember what he did to piss you off? That's where I cry foul."

 She paced between the two pagans, giving both considering looks. "I've got my uncle's morals," the nephilim explained amicably. "Which means I'm inclined to teach assholes a lesson. You, Zeus, are an asshole. So blinded by your vengeance that you ignore your own family. Ever wonder why it took seven years for Artemis to track him down? Hmm? Stars, it's like a bad soap opera. But, regardless, you're a lost cause. The question now is whether your daughter is willing to follow you to her death when she doesn't approve of your torture of Prometheus in the first place."

 For the first time, Zeus looked something resembling troubled. "Artemis? Tell her she's wrong."

 The hunter goddess looked away. 

 "Artemis?" he repeated in concern. "I am doing this for us – for our kind. He is the reason we're here and not ruling the world. He's the reason they have forgotten all about us."

 Resolutely, Artemis lifted her head and met her father's eyes. "There are worse things than being forgotten."

 Dawn broke into a creepy splitting grin as Zeus's expression turned thunderous. "I am your father, and you will obey me."

 "You were once my father. Now you're someone else," Artemis said firmly, dropping the hand holding the hunters in place and swiftly drawing her bow and firing an arrow at her imprisoned father. Lightning flashed around him and then he fell to the ground dead.

 "I wasn't trying to get you to shot him, but that's certainly an effective way to cut ties with your father," Dawn remarked.

 "Thank you," Artemis said, bowing her head to Dawn. She turned a loving look on Shane, which turned pained as she looked at Hayley, who still had her arms wrapped around her son. "I'm sorry." Artemis walked over to her father and knelt down beside his body. She picked up one of his hands, and with awhooshing sound they both vanished.

 "Anyone else think that was a little anti-climactic?" Dean asked.

 

***


	4. Chapter 4

"So Artemis had a forbidden lovers thing going on with Prometheus behind Zeus' back? Clearly he doesn't remember that if he can't remember an eagle picking at his liver."

 "It's called  _tact_ , Dean," Sam said with no little exasperation.

 "So how's it gonna work with the forgotten ex and the not-so-freaked mom?" Dean continued, ignoring his little brother with a practiced ease. "Ménage a trois?" he asked with interest.

 "That's something they're going to have to work out for themselves," Dawn replied with a shrug, easily ignoring inappropriate commentary.

 "But Artemis left," Sam said.

 "She'll be back. At some point Shane is going to want to know what happened to him. She's the only one with answers. A goddess is also perfectly capable of waiting until the natural end of Hayley's mortal life," Dawn pointed out, somewhat grimly. It was never fun outliving people you cared about. She had a lot of friends these days, nearly all with mortal life spans, most of whom saw nothing wrong with risking their lives. True, she was risking herself more these days than she had in the last couple millennia or so, but odds were good that she was still going to see them all die. She was  _not_  looking forward to that.

 "What about Ollie?" Dean asked, proving once again that he wasn't as oblivious as he frequently pretended to be. "No more curse – what happens now?"

 Dawn shrugged. "He's the son of a titan - whatever that gives him will show up at some point, or not at all. It's hit or miss with these things. I'm going to suggest he get in touch with the other kids on the NINJAT network. Jacob, maybe Jesse – there aren't that many kids involved in this sort of thing, really."

 "You told Henry about Amy?" Sam asked plaintively. 

 "He told me you two were avoiding him, so yes, I mentioned you were seeing a kitsune. I am not in charge of your social lives," Dawn stated firmly. "You two need to accept the fact that you suddenly have a grandfather and stop trying to avoid him. You've moved into the same bunker as him for crying out loud!"

 The brothers exchanged guilty looks. "We'll work on it," Sam finally said.

 "Good, because I can only juggle so many crises at once, and Lily's meltdown has me at full capacity." Oh, but Zeus was a  _douche_. She almost wished Artemis hadn't killed him so that  _she_  could. Lily was one of  _hers_ , and that was one thing sure to get her ire up even faster than hurting kids. "If I wasn't so busy these days, I'd probably turn into a Trickster like Gabriel."

 Sam shuddered. "I know he tries to help in his own – bizarre – way, but one go around of eternal Tuesdays was more than enough to put me off Tricksters."

 She smiled. "He grows on you."

 "Yeah, like fungus," Dean added.

 Dawn snorted. "You ever find Dorothy's key?"

 "Gave it back to her this morning."

 ***

 Dorothy stuck around for another few days. Partly because she needed to recover from seventy five years in a bottle, partly because the new world she'd woken up in was nothing like 1935, and partly because she flat out demanded to know what was going on. She took the news of the Horsemen better than Hayley, but that wasn't a particularly difficult feat. 

 In the end, though, she chose to return to Oz. "I have a rebellion to finish," she explained.

 "That would still be going on?" Sam asked with a quizzical expression. "I mean, it's been seventy five years."

 "Time moves differently between dimensions," Dawn said off-handedly, glancing over at her ninja. "You going too?"

 Lily bit her lip. "Dorothy invited me when she heard I was looking for something different. I mean, I enjoy being a doctor, helping people, but –"

 "But Zeus was a dick?" Dawn concluded. "I know. It's not your fault," she said, laying a hand on the other woman's arm. "If you need to get away and try something else, go ahead. I'm not – well, technically I am your boss – twice over – but I'm also your friend. And I'm telling you to have fun in Oz.”

 Lily glanced guiltily at Charlie, who just waved it off. “I’m needed here or else I’d totally be coming with. A little bit jealous that you’re going to _Oz_ to be perfectly honest, but maybe when things calm down a bit I can visit. Just be sure that _you_ visit and you have to tell me _all_ about it.” With total distain for Lily’s deadly, if controlled, powers, Charlie threw her arms around her friend and gave Lily a tight hug. After a moment, Dawn joined in.

 “One thing before you go," Dawn said.

 "What?"

 She pulled a feather out of thin air. It was black, shimmering blue-white where it reflected the light.

 Lily looked at it with something akin to awe. "I'll lose it," she said, refusing to take it.

 Dawn gave her an easy smile. "Hard to lose a tattoo."

 Lily blinked. Looks of confusion were exchanged around the room. Dawn took pity on them all. "Stab it into the skin and it shrinks down into a tattoo. Can be used as an emergency beacon to me, a tracker, and if something knows how to look, it will tell them you're protected."

 Lily took it hesitantly. "Where do I put it?" she asked, holding it as if it was made of glass.

 "Wherever you wouldn't mind a tattoo. Skye has hers above her shoulder blade, but she was unconscious at the time and I was trying to keep her from dying."

 After a brief consultation with Charlie, Lily opted for her left hip.

 Promising to return if they needed a break, or help, or their work was done, Dorothy stuck her key into the nearest door, turning it into a portal to Oz, through which the two woman walked, turning to give one final wave before the doors closed behind them.

 Dawn watched them disappear with a muted sigh. If only all her problems were so easily resolved.

 

 


End file.
